Share this:

Astros pitcher Lucas Harrell was sick of watching the Detroit Tigers constantly high-five during a brutal four-game series sweep at Minute Maid Park.

Reliever Wesley Wright said the Astros’ constant failure had become a “manhood” issue. Detroit starter Justin Verlander didn’t allow a hit until the seventh inning Sunday in the Tigers’ 9-0 victory before a crowd of 23,228. The defeat capped a 37-8 Detroit run since Thursday, pushed the Astros to their sixth consecutive loss, and left them with a major league-worst 8-24 record.

Astros catcher Carlos Corporan said a young club that has dropped 10 of 11 games and has won only four times in the last 23 days has too much pride to regularly be intimidated on its home field.

Astros closer Jose Veras? He simply had enough.

Several Astros said the eight-year veteran led a closed-door postgame meeting Sunday. Veras acknowledged using his proud, pounding voice to deliver a wake-up call to a team that was outscored 28-2 during its final 11 innings against the Tigers (19-11).

A series that began with two games of frustrating promise — a 14th-inning defeat Thursday, a one-run ninth-inning loss Friday — ended as the Astros’ lowest point of an already troubled season.

“It’s easy to come here, lose a game, take a shower, guys can go home and say, ‘OK, we’ll get it tomorrow.’ No. It’s not that way,” Veras said. “We get paid to win ballgames. We are here to win ballgames. You (played) on teams in the minors to be here. Now you’re here. You’ve got to find a way to be successful to stay here.”

Veras won a World Baseball Classic gold medal in March with the Dominican Republic. Like many Astros, he’s struggled during the initial stages of the 2013 season. But Veras is passionate about baseball, and he’s grown tired of watching his new team’s losses quickly mount.

Through 32 games, the Astros are on pace for a record-setting 122 defeats. They’ve won only two series, have been swept four times, and have given up four-game series to Boston and Detroit in the last 11 days.

“People say, ‘It’s 162 games; we’ll get it later.’ Later when? It’s (32) games. When you going to take it?” Veras said. “So that’s all, you know? We’ve got to turn it around. We’ve got to find a way.”

Astros veterans Carlos Pena, Ronny Cedeno, Rick Ankiel and Wright spent pregame interviews Sunday using different words to say the same thing: The club wants to play better for first-year manager Bo Porter and knows its performance has been unacceptable.

Big-picture questions about the short-term direction of the Astros’ rebuilding movement — the team’s active payroll is by far the lowest in baseball — are out of players’ hands.

None of the club’s veterans are naive, though. There’s a difference between being outmatched and embarrassed, and everything from offensive strikeout records and three losing streaks of at least five games to starting pitchers who can’t stay on the mound through the fifth inning has cut into the Astros’ pride.

“It gets old, and it’s wearing on us,” Harrell said. “We’re better than what we’ve been playing. … We’re embarrassed as a whole. We’re a team. We’re a family.”

Wright is the longest-tenured Astro. He watched many of the club’s 213 combined losses the last two seasons up close.

The reliever left the ballpark Sunday wondering how a young, unproven team will react now that it’s been called out by its own.

“We all felt the performance has just been god-awful the last couple days and we can’t continue to put that type of showing out there,” Wright said. “It’s a challenge. Just to see what type of men we are and what type of baseball players we are.”